Conditions of Visibility : Writings on Photography in Contemporary India

Elaborating new theoretical perspectives on visual hegemony, this book addresses the political processes of the photographic image. How does photography invoke an epistemology that subtly determines the scope and limit of what can be understood, said or done with images? Srivatsan uses gender, caste and class to serve as frames of reference for this very original and stimulating analysis. He takes into consideration a range of visual material: handpainted cinema hoardings, the modernism of Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographs in police records and the visual politics of advertising and news photography.

The photograph, better than writing in a language, produces a visible and recognizable entity as the author of a list of disorders. The photograph brings a lustrous finish to the rowdysheet\'s prime function: the demarcation of social unrest as originating in specific individuals. Order, in the irresistible perspective we inherit from British rule, can be envisioned only if disorder be individualized and safely contained (indeed, as Foucault says, even produced?) within a manageable grid of information. (The Photograph on a Rowdysheet)